PARENT: Minor league teams can't flourish in big league town

Philadelphia Wings captain Brodie Merrill, right, and Kyle Buchanan visited Shipley School in Lower Merion to share their wisdom with the school’s lacrosse players last March. More than a decade of futility has hurt attendance at Wings game and led to their exodus from Philadelphia this year. (Special to the Times / PETE BANNAN)

The hair-band heavy metal blared, and since it was 1987 and this was the Spectrum, that wasn’t unusual. Except it kind of detracted from what was taking place down on stage level ... because there was no band there, just a bunch of past-college kids and older Canadian imports firing lacrosse balls off walls that on other nights of the week were called hockey boards.

No matter, for that winter, the Philadelphia Wings were en route to a most successful inaugural season at 3-3. Yes, six games, with most of the players earning about $100 a pop to try not to trip over rippled “turf.” But in the three games at their Spectrum home, these new Wings filled the lower and upper bowls of seats, though as a rookie writer in a half-empty press box I remember thinking, “This can’t last.”

Such success at the gate wasn’t a surprise to those fans who had turned out to watch another Wings team in the original National Lacrosse League in 1974-75 before that league went bankrupt.

The Wings were one of four teams (with New Jersey, Baltimore and Washington) in something called the Eagle Pro Box Lacrosse League, which was owned by two guys from Kansas City named Russ Cline and Chris Fritz, who later sold interest in everything but their one favorite-selling team: The Wings. They owned them until 2012, when former Wings player Mike French, a Radnor resident, was part of a group that bought out Cline and Fritz ... and subsequently decided to have the Wings fly away for good this summer.

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In a statement released July 11, French said of the team he served since 1987 as player, head coach, general manager, president and finally majority owner, “The financial model in a market with so many sport and entertainment alternatives has proven to be unsustainable.”

Apparently, it took 28 years for that harsh reality to set in.

Back in the day, however, these Wings were a hot ticket, especially when they won six of their eight regular season games in 1989, then went on to win the championship of what had been renamed that year as the Major Indoor Lacrosse League. That was so much fun that they did it again in 1990. They were still minor leaguers on the local sports scene, but the local sports scene essentially stunk — the Eagles were about to fire Buddy Ryan, the Flyers had forgotten how to make the playoffs, the Sixers were good but Charles wasn’t great enough to take them anywhere, and the Phillies ... well, they were the Phillies.

Many Wings fans stuck with them through rough patches. Since winning their sixth and last league title in 2001 in what became the National Lacrosse League, the Wings made the playoffs just four times in the next 13 years.

If you gauge the social media reaction to French’s announcement about this “unsustainable” market, you get the idea that fans think lack of performance had much to do with the club’s financial decline. But even disappointed Wing Nuts know this is a major league sports market. And if you need proof of how “minor league” sports entertainment alternatives have failed, just take a look at some recent history.

The Phantoms, the Flyers’ AHL affiliate franchise since 1996, was shipped out in 2009. They are returning soon to a beautiful new building in downtown Allentown, hoping that being based in a very minor league city near a major metro market will be a selling point.

Major League Soccer markets the same way, housing its teams in soccer-specific stadiums on the fringe of the metro areas. Hence an 18,000-seat Union venue in Chester. That club has a better working model than the Philadelphia KiXX, who played in an indoor soccer league that kept changing names and venues until disbanding in 2010.

Philly just isn’t small enough to sustain minor league teams operating on a margin. Never has been. Before the Phantoms there were the Blazers, a WHA team that played one season (1972-73) in the old Civic Center. I remember that because there were always free tickets given away in my Catholic grade school.

Right after they left, the Firebirds moved in, representing the North American Hockey League, then the AHL, then the city of Syracuse by 1979. Outdoors in Philly, all kinds of minor soccer pitches were made. They included the Atoms (1973-76), who were a top draw with Ridley High grad Bob Rigby as a rookie goalie in their first season who made the cover of Sports Illustrated. But by their fourth season in 1976, the spirit of the Atoms went away because the club was sold to a group of Mexican owners, who replaced many of the team’s players with guys from south of the border. That worked wonders for attendance. The Atoms quickly split.

Then came the Fury in 1978, a NASL club whose ownership group included rock stars Peter Frampton and Paul Simon. They were big enough to play in Veterans Stadium but failed to show soccer fans the way, so the sounds of Fury were silenced in 1980.

The Philadelphia Stars made a summer football splash in 1984, winning the USFL championship. Then they bolted for Baltimore when it became obvious the USFL would have a short shelf life.

This is just a slice, courtesy of Wikipedia and a jaded writer’s memory, of a long history of minor-level teams failing in Philadelphia. (Remember the Philadelphia Bell? The A’s? ... Nah, me neither). Yet, like the second coming of the Philadelphia Soul, still they try.

The Philadelphia Barrage outdoor men’s lacrosse team, for example, won three Major League Lacrosse titles in a four-year span (2004-07). But the Barrage wasn’t strong enough to keep afloat. They played three years at Villanova, then a fourth in West Bradford Twp., which to Philly fans might as well be Wisconsin. In 2008 they were taken over by the league and played “home” matches in other league towns until mercifully folding the next year.

Two women’s soccer franchises came and went in recent years and no one noticed. Philadelphia also has two “professional” Ultimate Frisbee teams. Google them.

And please, feel free to support them.

Who knows? Maybe after 28 years or so, they might prove to be sustainable.